i dont even know if there is anywhere in NA that can realistically handle hundreds of thousands of people without being a complete nightmare.

Football stadiums are the closest thing, and Metallica has played them at least 3 times in North America. Monsters of Rock, Summer Sanitarium & Madly In Anger. Gillette Stadium holds 67,000 people and it took me 3 hours to get out of the parking lot when ACDC was there in 2009. That's enough of a nightmare for me. But, to their credit, Metallica is probably the only other hard rock/metal band that could do that.

very well aware of that rainman, i was at both summer sanitariums at foxboro (madly in anger was at the garden)

67,000 =/= hundreds of thousands

edit: actually looking at the supposed capacities of the announced shows, they are not up in the hundreds of thousands like i assumed, and are comparable to our biggest football stadiums. point is, metallica selling more in europe probably has more to do with the geography and infrastructure and not because the dont have the fan base in america.

I know, I'm just exaggerating. It just seems like so long ago that they toured here.

3 years ago on the Death Magnetic tour, then the big 4 shows. Metallica does the rounds internationally regularly enough, pretty much the only thing that's infallible about them is that they are relentless in their touring schedule.

First NA leg: 10/17/08 through 2/1/09.
Last NA leg: 9/11/09 through 12/12/09.

The last time I saw them was on the first leg (1/12/09) and at the end of the show Lars said something like "Well, I hope we don't wait another four and a half years to come back!" or something like that. I guess he wanted to wait longer.

None of these shows, or if i'm not mistaken any of their Escape from the studio tours over the last 7-8 years, have been mostly festivals no? It'd be a whole other level of lameness if these were full tours with 2-3 support bands and they were just playing arenas or something, and not doing it in North America.